Impact of Covid-19 on Education System
Posted By Gaganjeet Singh |2021-06-03 20:15
The COVID-19 pandemic is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first case of COVID-19 was reported from Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019. The World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern regarding COVID-19 on 30 January 2020, and later declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020. Symptoms of COVID-19 are highly variable, ranging from none to life-threateningly severe. Transmission of COVID-19 usually occurs when people inhale droplets or small airborne particles exhaled by an infected person. The risk of infection is highest when people are in close proximity. Recommended preventive measures include social distancing, wearing face masks in public, ventilation and air-filtering, hand washing, covering one's mouth when sneezing or coughing, disinfecting surfaces, and monitoring and self-isolation for people exposed or symptomatic.
Due to the life threatening risk of the pandemic countries were forced to put up lockdown so that they can break the chain of the virus and save the people till the time vaccination does not develop.
World Economic Forum (WEF) has termed COVID-19 pandemic a black swan event that has suddenly and dramatically changed our life.
This pandemic has severely affected all the sectors of the economy such as finance, agriculture, education, industry etc.
According to a UNESCO report, as of March 23, over 1.3 billion learners are out of school due to coronavirus. The closure of schools, colleges and universities has disrupted the flow of learning of the students and the existing method of imparting knowledge across the world. Several unforeseen challenges have erupted in the K-12 education, which needs to be addressed in a collaborative manner.
C.S. Lewis says that, “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
Schools, colleges and universities started reinventing the education process. Times like these can build the foundations of resilience to face such unprecedented events in the future.
Online classes become a necessity to reduce disruption for senior school and college students, but the question is our educational institutions have the capacity to adopt it and teachers the bandwidth to teach over video apps,"
There are number of issues faced by teachers and students during online teaching such as:
1. In case of online classes eye to eye contact is missing between teacher and the taught. The proverb goes well ‘Cat is away and the mice will play’. Online education in a learning environment typically creates a monologue rather than a real dialogue. It takes more effort to build a rapport with the instructor and the peers in an online environment.
2. Students get a strayed from the topic. Students too are not used to this kind of learning. There is tremendous effort on the part of the teacher to prepare digital content for the lecture, the working hours unlike regular teaching are not defined anymore. Giving feedback to each and every student remains a challenge.
3. Psychological disconnect comes up very frequently since it lacks human interaction. A child learns from other peers too. Students at a school learn to interact with other peers, learn and compete too. Competition can be very stimulating and enriching.
4. Under these lockdown circumstances richer countries are better prepared to move to online learning strategies, although with a lot of effort and challenges for teachers and parents. In middle-income and developing countries, the situation is very mixed and if we do not act appropriately, the vast inequality of opportunities that exists. Many children especially economically weaker section students do not have laptops, smart phones, internet connectivity or supportive/educated parents. Others do. This will create a major difference in the learning capabilities and growth of students.
5. Students experience gaps and regression in their achievement.
6. The well-connect and bond are missing in students with the teacher. online learning is not able to provide the culture and value inculcation in students.
7. Adoption of a different teaching style according to the need of every child’s learning capability is very difficult.
8. Without eye to eye contact the teacher is not fully able to understand the concept clarity of the topic in students.
9. Collaborative learning is missing in students.
10. Online classes lack in stimulating students which is actually a very important fact of classroom teaching.
Issues / Difficulties faced by teachers during online classes.
1. All the teachers were not tech-savvy to suddenly adopt this new method of teaching students.
2. Teaching equipment were not available with every teacher at home such as black board, well equipped laptops, cameras, microphones etc.
3. In a country like India, Internet connectivity is also one of the major issues faced by teachers while connecting with students. Digital divide may short circuit learning too.
4. Students are not taking the classes and efforts of teachers seriously and creating unnecessary hindrance in the teaching learning process.
5. Software used for the online classes are not safe as it creates a threat in the mind of students as well as teachers of hacking of data which leads to obstructions in the online learning.
6. Unlike regular teaching, work hours are not defined anymore..
One can hope that, despite the many dark sides of the current pandemic, there might also be a sliver of silver lining for education.
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